Nermin Er

Days Heap Upon Us

Days heap upon us. All plain. All clouds except a narrow opening at the top of the sky. All cloudy except a narrow opening at the bottom of the sky with others smaller. All cloudy except a narrow opening at the bottom of the sky. All cloudy except a narrow openıng at the top of the sky. All cloudy. All cloudy All cloudy. Except one large opening with others smaller. And once in the clouds. Days heap upon us. Where is our anger. And the shades darker than the plain part and darker at the top than the bottom. But darker at bottom than top. Days heap upon us.

Lisa Robertson ‘The Weather’ Tuesday Notes

The lines in pursuit of shadows we cannot follow. The falling light, the dim and sharp edges. The shadow of one becoming the structure of the other. Intermittently, grazing its own point. A layered darkness. A state of unfinished construction. A destruction, its rhythm dismantling and returning to itself. The pursuit of empty space as each piece finds its own place. The dream of a speck en route. The hope of a shadow. The blackness pours unhurriedly on to the white surface finding its way. The direction the drop pools in. Smudges that are carried over. The hurdles along the way becoming the beams. Tapering, lengthening, raised high raised high from the ground, gliding with feet barely touching down leaving in its path an empty space, trails. corners that collide, corners that meet A scene that twitches. Derelict and interior. The frame stacked, multiple and inward. A vacuum diminishing, A heap.

Nermin Er

*Translation: Alev Ersan **Special thanks: Sevinç Çalhanoğlu, Alev Ersan

The stipend of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe is made possible in the frame of a cooperation between the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) and the ZK/U – Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin as well as DEPO in Istanbul.

Melissa Rodrigues

Wandering, collecting, mapping for an Afrofuturistic archaeology

The project that I intend to develop in the Magic Carpets Residency relates to the research I am developing since 2016 around the representation of the black body in Western visual culture, thinking and rethinking these same representations and the whole construction of a visual discourse on black existences.
I intend to develop the research in a body-city-body perspective, in a circular and continuous movement from my place of existence as a black woman in relation to a city that is unknown to me and through other black narratives that exist and resist in the city.

From the performative and aesthetic act of walking, wandering, I intend to collect objects, appropriate images, mapping memories and produce my own images, my own discourses, listening to the different voices that inhabit the city. *

*Before COVID – 19

Coronas in the Sky 

Not a manifesto!
an essay on Afrofuturism and liberation

After 4 days in Berlin and walking a 20 kilos suitcase through metro lines, buses, streets, stairs, an empty airport and a ghost plane, I return home, to the one where I live in the last years. Outside there is silence and the sound of sirens shapes the space once inhabited by a city.

This is the place and the time where I exist today and from where I speak.

Being in artistic residency in the midst of a pandemic it’s a creative delirium and a constant attempt to connect with the surrounding reality. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Out there the world revolves. The next great crisis approaches silently and cruelly devastating lives already marked by racial, gender and social inequality.

Everything is connected. 

Between texts, books, articles, images, a performance is being materialized. 

It’s a poem, an essay. The images emerge on a dark background in contrast to the light that radiates from the Coronas pointed at the Sky, the finger stirs in the colonial wound, the power is questioned and she dances frenetically.

Many thanks to Magic Carpets and Creative Europe Platform fund.

Hyunju Oh

Without Words: Part 1. Soothing the Time

This performance is a part of the <Without Words> performance series, which expresses "the wound of time" or "the time of injury" with an act of soothing and stroking. This work induces the passage of time and various associations through body parts, movements, and actions.

Many thanks to Arts Council Korea Fund.

Farhad Delaram

Garbage Dance

I have lived all my 31 years in the megacity of Tehran where the population grows fast, making every resident a garbage producing factory. What bothers me the most is this ever increasing mass of garbage. It seems that they are dancing on my nerves every time that I am walking through the streets. This city symphony is my attempt to show this kind mentality to the viewer. That is why I decided to portray the roaring dance of garbage in Tehran. So the best way was to blend portrait documentary with city symphony. Filmed, edited and sound designed by myself, this film starts with a longshot of garbage and continues to get closer to the images of trash to the point that at the end, the viewer gets engulfed with the garbage. The music used for this kind of documentaries is mainly Jazz but since I wanted it to feel local, I chose a Persian traditional piece of music. The city is not really far from the image that I show at the end of the film.

The Ambeessadors

Educational Pollinators' Garden

Pollinators are directly responsible for 1/3 of every bite of food we eat. More importantly, they co-created and sustain the lush biodiversity that blankets our landscapes in velvety greens and vibrant colors. For millions of years they have helped trees and flowers and fruits and vegetables to reproduce, which in turn provide nourishment, medicine, shelter, and more for Earth's creatures big and small. There are more than 200,000 pollinators on the planet: from bees and butterflies to birds and bats, at times even your dog. Of these, most people know about Apis mellifera, the European honey bee. But did you know that in Germany, we have more than 565 other bee species? Some of them live right here in this garden.  Welcome to this Pollinators' Garden, a sanctuary where they can feast, build homes, and be admired — and protected — by people like you.